Category Archives: Healthy Living

WIAW: Weekend Musings

By Posted in Food, Healthy Living Tagged , , , , , , , 42 Comments

Last weekend, I had a work conference.  It was a lot of fun and related to college student health…not really health as in nutrition and fitness but the other forms of health such as mental and social (I know…bet you forgot about those).  A lot of the seminars I chose to go to were on cyber bullying which I found to be most interesting.  (I’ve posted a bit about that and I plan to post a bit about it tomorrow too).

With day long conferences come eating and hanging out with your coworkers.  Sure it wasn’t the best dietary safe zone you could imagine but that’s okay as I didn’t get sick nor did I even need to take my blood sugar meds.

Here is something I found extremely interesting…just throwing this one out there.  I went to a HEALTH conference (you know that professionals are in charge of…people who got degrees in nutrition, dietetics, public health, community health…ect).  Yet for some odd reason, the food being served wasn’t ultra vegan peanut butter with a side of what the eff is that topped voo doo food found in the second aisle top shelf of some specialty health store.  It was natural, healthy food.  Food such as NORMAL peanut butter, NORMAL roast beef, NORMAL spinach salad.  (of course there were options for those with real life dietary restrictions…but all normal probably walmart bought food).

For breakfast we had a mixed variety of berries with yogurt.  The choice of coffee as well (my only complaint was there was not enough coffee…oh well).

berries

Lunch was a plethora of mixed salads (pasta salad…random salad greens…lots of choices) as well as a roast beef wrap with cheddar cheese and mayo (I picked around the mayo because I’m not a fan of mayo or ranch…it was still good though)

roastbeefsalad

Dinner we were on our own and my work went to a famous place called Duffs.  It reminded me of the bar “Duffs” back in my college down but it was certainly not that quality.  They are known for their wings and boy were they good.  We ordered 150 wings among 12 or so people.  Seeing as I had run before, I was easily able to complete my fair share of wing ordering.  (No these were not some weird health wing or something…these were greasy fried wings.).

My wing face

That’s that.  It was all really good food, but I must say the intensely hot wings came back to bite my in the butt (erg esophagus) the next morning when I ran and was breathing fire.

We also got to go to Niagara Falls which was a lot of fun (I’ve been a few times but it is always nice to go).

niagarafalls1

beckyandi

Questions for you:

Do you like wings?

Do you pack your own foods when traveling? 

WIAW: Public Health Conference Style

By Posted in Healthy Living Tagged , , , , , , 48 Comments

As you may or may not know, last week (or two weeks ago..I don’t remember…) I went to a big public health conference and it was a lot of fun.   A big misconception about people in the public health field is that we eat perfectly…all the time…

That is false my friends.

Also false is the only part of health is nutrition.  Whenever I mention I work in the Public health field on the blog, I 95% of the time get the response of:

“I would love to work in health, I read about nutrition and healthy living blogs already so much”

My job is not to read healthy living blogs…and it really doesn’t even relate to nutrition half of the time.  I’m sorry, just as people went to college for math, science, English…whatever…I went to school for public health.  I have a huge basis of knowledge that isn’t limited to nutrition and healthy living blogs.  Public health isn’t just nutrition or lowest calorie being best. 

While obviously I love blogging about living “pretty” healthy and working out, that isn’t my main focus with work and I irks me to no end when other bloggers believe they have the same amount of knowledge of public health.  Even more so saying yeah that seems so easy because I read all these blogs and blog myself.

 If you haven’t completed a four year degree in public health, community health…some sort of health, please don’t claim we have the same basis of knowledge.    I do not claim to be an expert in anything but I do claim to have a very strong basis in public health.

Okay end rant. 

Now on to WIAW at the conference. 

hoarding coffee…classic…

Mushroom salad and apple crisp with coffee

salmon and snap peas, chipoltle salad (with lots of guac) and smoked turkey sandwich with pretzels

salmon and snap peas with also fruity cheesecake

Confession number 2: Because I do work out more then most other people…I get hungry more then everyone else.  While all this food was amazing…it was NOT ANYWHERE CLOSE ENOUGH FOR ME…Did it feel awkward I was eating twice as much as most people?

blueberry cheesecake, cupcakes galore (I had 3) and Guinness beer

Somewhat…but  I was over it.  I packed a ton of snacks and went from there.

Oh and I dug out some real girl clothes too ;)

PS: If you are interested in doing a PMB {physical, mental and brag post} tomorrow link up.  Where are the weeks going seriously!?

Questions for you:

1.       Have you ever been to a conference?

2.       What irks you about your job? 

Friday Food Label Talk

By Posted in Healthy Living Tagged , , 19 Comments

Friday Favorites.  It’s no secret that many bloggers agree that fat sources are their favorite kinds of food.  Nut butter being what I have noticed to be one of the most sought after.  I’m not the biggest fat fat, I mean don’t get me wrong-I have plenty for my body and such, I just never got on board USS nut butter craze.

Well in my Navigating the American Diet class we spent 3 hours (yes 3 hours) chatting about fats.  Some people knew way more than I could ever dream and some people knew very little.  The funny thing about this MAJOR’s class is there are nonmajors that took it because they thought it was a dieting/weight loss course.  I mean anyone can sign up for a 300 level course at my school (granted it has no prereqs) and it doesn’t bother me too much.  I can tell it bothers some of the most intense of students though.

I digress. 

I found a lot of things interesting (obviously) from that discussion but I decided to just share something that kind of caught me off guard about the labeling of fats and food in general.

When a food label says:

Fat free-It just means that there is less than half a gram of fat in the food and they don’t have to label it.  So really…are very many foods entirely “fat  free”?  Are many politicians 100% honest?

Calorie free-means it has less than 5 calories per serving.  That includes 99.9% of artificial sweeteners  claiming to be “calorie free”

Low Fat-less than 3 grams of fat!

Less and Reduced-Just has to have 25% less than whatever it is claiming.  Less Sugar-so 25% less sugar. Reduced sugar means the same thing!

Lite-1/3 few  calories or not more than half the fat of a higher calorie version.

For my two favorites:

Healthy-Must be low in saturated fat and contain limited amounts of choelserol and sodium (vague much?)

Low calorie-must be lower than 40 calories per serving.  I’m still on the fence about this one.

What do you think about that eh? 

Sometimes I pretend I’m not the Worlds Best Confuser

By Posted in Food, Healthy Living, Personal, Resturants, Swimming Tagged , , , , , , , 17 Comments

I’m probably the worlds best confuser. 

But anyways-I’ll try and explain my project about nutrition again.  The objective of the project is basically to show that our society (at least the American society) has developed such a craving for certain foods that has caused some many fast food, fried food, junk food, crap food to be most prominent.  For instance, when you drive down the road from my house, I come across a KFC, followed by Micky D’s, Wendys, then Taco Bell.  Then behind both of those a café (my favorite JoJacks!)  and Quiznos.  I am not saying quiznos is healthier by any stretch of the first four options which have about 90% unhealthy choices.

I am, however, a believer that you can find a few healthy things at fast food restaurants as long as you don’t layer it in the Ceaser Dressing they give ya.

We were given a boat load of options to cut from our diets and I know (being a food blogger and a lazy one at that) that cutting restaurants in general is not feasible for me.  In fact, I could do it but it would be very difficult for me personally.  I love going out to eat.  Love it.  Judge me if you want-I don’t care and I will continue to try every restaurant within a 100 mile radius of me.

The second option was cutting out just fast food and fried food.  I have fried food maybe once a month.  Give it to me grilled baby.  The only fast food I eat religiously is Quiznos. So that wouldn’t be a big challenge and thus a little bit boring.

The third choice was desserts in general.  Um-no that would be like cutting out restaurants and I can guarantee you my recovery meal of choice from long runs ice-cream.  So it would be extremely challenging and may result in more harm done then needed.

Cake batter icecream=key to my heart

Lastly (besides the option that I couldn’t read) was giving up added sugared items and chocolate.  This DOES not include unsweetened chocolate but was meant to include things like candy, cookies, cake, powdered sugar donuts, sugared cereals…eh you get the point.  When I have cereal, is the day there is a huge pancake epidemic.   Chuck hit it right on the point when he said the purpose of this grouping was look for more natural foods and the least amount of ingredients.  Thanks Chuck, you always seem to have to my back.  :)

I typed in cereal to my 3000+ photos and found this one time Nov 3 I had Trix.

So yes-I hope that better explains my assignment.   Here are my two days thus far. 

Day 1 I was traveling all day and only to come home to my mom having bought cupcakes and then baked my favourite cookies.  I should have done this journey when I was soley at school.  I had lots of salmon instead for dinner because it was in the fridge and I love salmon.  If I hadn’t started this stupid thing I would have had probably 5 cookies and called it a night.

Day 2- I wasn’t home for a good portion of the day which was nice because those cookies are still saying hey girl hey. Anywho-another successful day.

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Today mom and I went on a date to my favorite café Jojacks!  I decided in honor of trying new things I would get the coconut shrimp salad.  The salad had mixed greens, mango, shredded coconut, shrimp topped with a lemon vinaigrette.  It was really good but my favorite still lies in the cranberry walnut salad.  (In the three days I’m home I’m going to try and convince my parents to go again…shhhh).

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I spent the majority of the day working on my nutrition paper about the HCG diet and I hope to be completely finished tonight.  My goal was to finish this paper tonight and another nutrition paper sometime else throughout the break.  If I make myself daily goals-I might actually get through them.

In the working out end, my joints were a little stiff today.  Does that sound weird because I’m not 90?  Anyways-I didn’t feel comfortable running and took today off and possibly tomorrow too.  I decided to go swim (can you believe it, I by myself decided to swim?…I wish I never had goggles and a swim cap at my house.).

Anywho my swim workout today was in meters and at sauna temperature today:
1000 warmup
400 IM
200 butterfly kick on back
1000 Pull
400 IM
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That’s all I got for being home today.

Question for you:

  1. Do you make daily goals, weekly goals, hourly goals, no goals?  Do you make to do lists or play it be ear?
  2. Favorite salad combination ever?

If you want to submit any life changing guest posts to me that would be awesome too.  Send me an email at lolzthatswim@gmail.com.

Manly Cooking Monday

By Posted in Food, Healthy Living, Recipe, Swimming Tagged , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

Monday is the start of a brand new week. For most of my college age bloggers, it marks exams. For me?

Not so much. I still have a full week of classes left.

My winter break is 1 and a half months though and it pushes me summer break on a different schedule. At my school, you can take a winterm course which is a 3 week high intensity class. Aram’s actually taking Spanish to get it done with and then leaving forever and spreading his wings into the real world. The class is from 9-2 everyday (even Saturdays). That is too much Spanish for me.

Anywho-good luck on your finals if ya got them! :)

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Here are my goals of the week:
1. Try at least 3 new foods on campus/in restaurants.
2. Try 1 new recipe.
3. Try to have at least one breakfast that is not pancakes.
4. Burn 10,000 calories this week. This isn’t as much as the calories as it is my goal to go 9 swim practices this week. Being a distance swimmer, the more school work I can get done on the weekends, the more practices I can go too and the better I get. Therefore, I was a busy bee this weekend to insure I could get these 9 practices done with.
5. Spend more time with friends outside of swimming. I will be stuck with the same people for a month, and a month of anyone gets tiring.

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Today I woke up with the worst pain in my stomach in the world. Curse you gym, I knew supersetting my abs would be a bad idea. They are only getting worse though. I love the feeling of sore abs though. I think it’s the greatest sore feeling.

Practice this week is combined for all practice groups. Since it is the same, I decided to swim with people I normally don’t swim with. You have to switch it up.
500 freestyle-400back-300breast-200fly
6X200IM interval
6X100 backstroke
400 Kick
2X400Pull
12X100IM interval
5X100 Cooldown

I came back and decided to make some lemon zest cakes. I used a new type of pancake mix that I found at Big Lots. So random. Anywho it’s called Kodiak Cakes. I really think it’s more a scone recipe because these pancakes were so chewy. I can’t even explain it-but I’m going to try making scones with it sometime soon. Topped with Chobani Greek yogurt, they are heavenly.

After class, Aram and I went to get some ingredients for tonight’s dinner. I couldn’t decide what sort of salmon I wanted and finally, with him getting frustrated, closed my eyes and grabbed one.

The best part of snow..scraping your car.

For lunch we went to Dexter’s, the best place for eats on campus. I tried their Neapolitan sandwich which had salami, ham, cheddar cheese, tomatoes and red peppers. With trying new things, you are bound to find things you are not too fond of. This is one of them. I think it may be the fact that I’m not the biggest fan of salami. It was too salty for my liking. I also had a fruit salad.

Does fruit salad count in my salad count?

 

I had another pumpkin protein muffin topped with chocolate peanut butter. I would take a picture but it looked the same as yesterday. It is the perfect preafternoon practice snack-it keeps me so fueled.

Practice this afternoon was the most intense we have had all season. Perhaps, it was just me because I got lane swapped and swam with sprinter boys.
1000 warmup
800 Pull
5X250 Interval Freestyle
2X150 Backstroke
8X150 Interval Freestyle
500 kick
10X50 Pull
10X75 backstroke

During the 250s, I was solid 25 behind the boys after the first one. As we continued the set, it was obvious I was a distance swimmer and they were not. By the 150s, I was on their butts. I had dropped time and they had added it. I felt awesome during this practice and it was really motivating for me.

Aram and I made grilled salmon for dinner. Along with baked pineapple casserole (recipe will be coming tomorrow) and stuffed mushrooms. They were stuffed with crab meat and yummy cheddar cheese. I wanted to use imitation crab but he was not a fan.

Bah-broken flash.

The baked pineapple gets it’s own post that I will post either tonight or tomorrow. I tried this at a restaurant while I was back home and have been on an obsessive rage to find a good baked pineapple recipe. Well-I found it and it’s really simple to make too. It reminds me a lot of bread pudding and for my southern friends, I love love love it. It is my favorite dessert and I could eat my weight in it. :)


The salmon-is grilled and delicious. I haven’t had salmon in a while and this hit the spot.

Questions for you:
Have you ever had baked pineapple?
What is your favorite ab workout? Mine is the ab roller all the way. Although butterfly kick, works real well too.
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Here is my shoutout of the day: To the person who found my blog by typing in “hair cut for college boy having wheat complexion.” What does having a wheat complexion mean? You should know I’m not up on the hip language you youngins use.